


While It Lasts

by Stonestrewn



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Consensual Kink, F/F, Light BDSM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:51:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why, if it isn’t the littlest Hawke!”</p><p>The words beat down hard on you - younger sibling was always meant to be a shared position – but you shake them off along with the rainwater clinging to your hood.</p><p>“Isabela,” you say, and she raises her pint in a one-sided toast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While It Lasts

You meet her again in a dingy tavern near the coast, the kind of place you would never have entered if you didn’t have a thunderstorm at your heels. 

“Why, if it isn’t the littlest Hawke!”

The words beat down hard on you - younger sibling was always meant to be a shared position – but you shake them off along with the rainwater clinging to your hood.

“Isabela,” you say, and she raises her pint in a one-sided toast.

You shove your way through the crowded room, careful not jab anyone with your staff by accident, and she disentangles herself from the rough-looking man who has thrown an arm around her shoulder. He barks something at her and though you can’t make out the exact words, you can guess at their meaning. Isabela doesn’t bat a lash. She navigates easily between the tables, her eyes fixed on you the entire time. She comes up close and then closer still, bending down to speak directly into your ear. Her breath tickles, but you don’t flinch away.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“Couldn’t I ask you the same thing?”

“Oh, you flatterer.”

You blush, realizing what you’ve just said, and Isabela laughs.

“Please,” she says, grinning wide and white. “This is my kind of dump. But you? You’re out of your element.”

“You’re one to talk,” you shoot back, lingering embarrassment rushing your words.

Isabela’s grin doesn’t shrink, but she furrows her brows a bit.

“What?”

“We’re a long way from the sea.”

“Oh.” She looks down at the sludge at the bottom of her pint, rolls her wrist to slosh it around. “I suppose that’s true.”

To your slight dismay she leads you back the way you so painstakingly came, one hand on your back, placed firmly between your shoulder blades. On occasion her hip brushes against your forearm, but you don’t move it. She leans against the wall next to the door.

It is, you realize, a good spot for a private conversation. The light is dim and the draft is strong, the nearest table angled away and the bar on the opposite side of the room. You draw your cloak a little snugger around yourself and marvel at Isabela’s bare-thighed nonchalance towards the chill.

“So… what happened?”

 “Hm?”

“You had a ship. What happened to it?”

Isabela tilts her head to the side, all wide-eyed bewilderment.

“What do you mean? It’s right-“ She motions to the sash around her waist and gives an exaggerated start, grabbing hold of your elbow.  “Andraste's knickers, I’ve dropped my ship! Quick, we need to find it!”

You can’t help but to chuckle.

 “You’re hilarious.”

She lets go of you. Your skin feels colder for it. 

“Aren’t I just?”

Isabela puts her empty pint down on a barrel. She moves just like she used to: with careless grace and seductive strength. Bit by bit, you relax. You don’t remember when you last had a chat this comfortable, without feeling the need to keep one hand on your staff at all time. The years since you last met her shrink away to nothing, incinerated by the fire light flickering in Isabelas warm, brown eyes. She stands taller and broader than you do, her shadow covers yours completely.

“I’m on my way to Ostagar,” you say.

“Really? What a coincidence, I’m off in that direction, too.”

Your heart beats a little harder.

“Maybe we could…” you begin, but before you have finished the sentence, she has already agreed.

“Sweetness, I’d love too.”

You smile, and it feels strange. The expression has gone unused for too long.

“Sounds like someone has been wanting company.”

“I’m never short for company. Companions, on the other hand, are hard to come by these days.”

Isabela turns and follows the wall into the dark of a corner, picking up a well worn cloak. She puts it on, tugging at it until it doesn’t catch quite as awkwardly on her daggers, and briskly walks over to the door, throwing it open despite the choir of protests from inside.

“Well?” she says. “Coming?”

The wind tugs furiously at her hair and the clouds are frightfully dark. What wasn’t much more than a drizzle when you entered the inn is now a skyfall.

“I thought-“ You look towards the stairs, worried now. The promise of a night sleeping in a bed has kept you going for a while. “You aren’t staying here?”

“I don’t stay anywhere.”

Isabela pulls up her hood and walks out into the rain.

 

\--

 

She kisses you on the third day. It’s not unexpected. You’ve seen it coming in the sway of her hips, in the way she eyes your neck, in her badly masked innuendos and the smirks that tug at the corners of her mouth. You’re not a little girl anymore, you know that one thing leads to another and that if you hold a woman’s gaze just so there might be a reward at the end of the banter.

You kiss her back with vigor, slide your arms around her waist and scoot closer on the log where you sit, until your thighs press together and her warmth through the fabric of your pants makes you dizzy. Isabela traces the curve of your ear with a finger and her tongue is patient, forgives you when you get out of synch.

She breaks the kiss too early.

“Now, if you ever get uncomfortable in any way you let me know, all right?” she says. “One word and I’ll back off. Hell, you don’t even have to use words; I’m fluent in body language.”

“I’m fine,” you reply, and she smiles.

“Just fine? Then I’ve lost my touch.”  

“You know what I mean.”

Isabela shrugs lightly. She looks at you, right in the eye at first, as if gauging your sincerity, but then she wanders. So does her hand. She touches your forehead, your nose, strokes both cheeks and presses the pad of her thumb against your lips. Carefully, she arranges your dirty, matted hair around your face.

You suffer it with your breath getting more strained by the second and your voice is high and tense when you say:

“The family resemblance is obvious, isn’t it?”

She blinks, fast.

“No one could get you two mixed up, though.”

“You miss her.”

“Of course I do,” she says, and she’s still smiling. She never stopped. “But I’ve missed you, too.”

 _Have you really?_ You want to ask, but you don’t. Instead you kiss her again, determinedly, like you have something to prove.

 

\--

 

She laughs when she kills. High and triumphant, like it’s a game.

You know it isn’t. Not even to her. You don’t get that good if you aren’t dead serious, you don’t move that fast or strike with such precision. You don’t end each day by sharpening your daggers, by polishing them until the steel shines like silver. 

Fire bursts from your fists and the screams of the men that were charging for you are lost in the roar of flames. The bolt of energy erupting from your fingertips leaves your arm tingling afterwards and you use your other hand to brandish your staff and finish the robber off with a well directed hit to the head.  Isabela is everywhere; they fall around you in twos and threes. 

While you catch your breath, she loots the bodies. There are quite a few. She goes about the task with a meticulousness she otherwise rarely displays – no pouch unchecked, no boot un-emptied. The spoils don’t please her much.

“Look at this junk!” she scoffs, showing you a rusty knife and a flawed tiger’s eye. “Why can’t we ever get robbed by someone with actual coin in their pockets?”

“If they had coin, they might not have felt the need to rob us.”

She gets started on the next corpse, glaring at you.

“I hate it when you get all logical on me.”

At the end of her scavenging you have enough coppers to afford you both a night under a roof. Two nights if you share the bed. If neither of you run straight to the bar for a pint or twelve, you will even be able to put some away towards future meals.  

The money puts a spring in Isabela’s step and you have trouble keeping up. Maybe it’s getting to you, life on the road. The fatigue will sneak up and overpower you at times, making every small movement an exertion. You should have left this road and taken off towards the south long ago if you wanted to reach Ostagar. Yet here you are, going ever westward.

Isabela’s stride holds no hesitation. You quicken your pace, despite your muscles protesting.

“Where are we going?” you ask, trying hard to keep your panting to a minimum. She cocks a brow.

“You don’t know where you’re headed?”

“I _was_ heading for Ostagar.”

“It’s that way,” Isabela says, gesturing behind her.

You roll your eyes but refuse to give in to annoyance and take the bait. Arguing with Isabela is pointless.

“Are we looking for something?”

“Sweetheart, there’s no one in this world that isn’t.”

“I thought maybe we were looking for your ship.” She doesn’t answer so you clarify, voice lathered in sarcasm: “The one you ‘dropped?’”

“Right. That.”

Isabela tips her head back, combs her fingers through her thick, dark hair, untangling a few knots until they run smoothly through the tresses. The daggers on her back clank against each other as she walks.  

“I didn’t lose it, you know. I let it go.”

Her straightforwardness surprises you. It’s a rare thing.

“Why?”

“Because what I wanted was a ship,” she says, “and under my command she was just a piece of driftwood.”

The path has started slanting upwards, snaking up a hill fuzzy with new, tender spring grass. Isabela speeds up, leaving you in her wake. She waits for you at the top, resting her weight on one leg and idly flinging a copper piece into the air with a thumb, catching it and repeating the motion. She looks at you, at your flushed face and shaky, aching legs, and her mouth smiles but her eyes do something quite different.

“Tell me, then. What are _you_ looking for?”

You snatch the copper from her out of midair.

“An inn.”

Isabela’s eyes glint. For the rest of that day, you walk shoulder to shoulder.

 

\--

 

She teaches you how to hurt her right.

She shows you how to tie knots that hold, how tight is too tight and the color of a good bruise. She tangles her hair around your fingers and asks you to pull. She bares her breasts to you, her lower belly and the insides of her thighs where the skin rubs together, and she points out where to aim the blows, how to make your handprints linger.

You keep two nails long and sharp for her, push in rough and fast and crooked, scrape against the slick walls as hard as you dare and dig that little groan out of her very core, feel her shiver and clench around you. You add a finger, add one more and spread them, membranes straining to stretch. Her clit is a hard pebble against your tongue and you work at it until your jaws ache, until she gasps for air, until she’s sobbing, until she’s begging you to stop.

“You’re so sweet,” she says afterwards. Her smile is languid rather than the wicked grin you’re sure she was going for. “My little honeysuckle.”

“Oh, shut up,” you say into her chest, without conviction. She hugs you closer.

“But you are. _So_ sweet.”  She kisses the top of your head, hooks a leg around yours. “Indulging me. Giving me what I want. You don’t think that’s sweet?”

Her embrace surrounds you completely, the heat and smell of her. It’s damp and deep, cooling sweat and dirt and sex. You know you smell of it, too. There was a time when it would have made you wrinkle your nose, but now it’s a comfort, another thing you share.

“You’re my sweet, sweet girl. Always lovely. Always kind.”

“Even when-“ you start, not intending to finish the sentence. Your palms still burn and there is something coiling in the pit of your stomach, a wretched sort of joy that nips at displays of pain, fills you to the brim with syrupy pleasure but leaves you nauseous as it withdraws.

“Especially then.”

She strokes your back. Over and over, all the way from your shoulders to the base of your spine, taking the occasional detour across your buttocks. It warms you up and winds you down, wraps your doubts in the soft cotton of her touch so that its sharp corners can’t scratch you. When she slides to your front and slips in between your labia you’re wet and ready for it.

“It’s nothing but a kindness, Bethany,” Isabela says, and you spread your legs a little more.

 

\--

 

You learn her body by heart.

Her skin is the story of a life led hard and fast, but fully. There are scars of every size: faint lines and bold strokes, the tissue knaggly, shiny, chapped. Blotches of discoloration from burns stain her belly and there is a hairless patch on her arm from when that spirit bolt grazed her. Her nails are short and her cuticles hardened, her palms are rough with calluses. Stretch marks stripe her breasts and hips. The clavicle that got broken has a visible bump. Her feet are knobby with corns.

She’ll be adding another scar soon.

You’re no healer, but you do the best you can with what you have, stopping the bleeding and closing the gash on her back. You smear the wound with salve and cover it with the cleanest part of your scarf, torn off. It will do, for now.

You help her into her tunic after you’re done, lacing it much looser than she would have herself. On each side you tie the string into a neat little bow. You wonder if your sister ever did this, when you all led different lives in a city miles and miles away.

Isabela flexes her shoulders gingerly, grimacing.

“I’m getting sloppy.”

“You’re just exhausted.”

It’s been days since the last village. You’re almost out of food, almost out of water. The land is dry, bristly weeds and thorny shrubbery, the road just a path, a mere suggestion. The soldiers that attacked you were deserters and desperate.  Your desperation beat theirs, but only narrowly.

 “My point exactly,” Isabela says. “I never used to be.”

“Everyone gets tired sometimes,” you say. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Until a mistake makes you dead.”

You gather up your supplies, what little you have left, rub your bloody fingers on the ground. It doesn’t leave you cleaner, only dirty in a different way. You wonder if your sister ever felt this tired.

“You’ve made worse mistakes and lived.”

 “True.” Isabela sighs. “As long as it’s your own mistake and no one else’s, I guess you’ve got nothing to whine about.”

She gets to her feet and you do, too, leaning your weight on your staff. You wonder where your sister is now, if she is seeing snow or greenery, marches or deserts, crowded streets or remote mountains, if she has someone there to see it with her.

You wonder if she ever thinks of you.

 

\--

 

Isabela has thrown off her boots and dug her toes into the sand. She has undone the buckles to the straps that hold her armor in place, untied the knot to the sash around her waist, wrapped her blades in the cloth and put them aside. She sits surrounded by her belongings like a queen holding court and her hair adorns her shoulders with pearls of salty water.

The sea is at rest, the waves rolling in only reluctantly. The sun sets slowly, bleeding orange, red and purple onto the sky and the clouds soak up the colors eagerly, flaunt their borrowed splendor without shame. The sky can afford to share. It has enough finery to spare.   

You sit down beside her, laying down your staff and wrapping your arms around your knees.

“It’s so beautiful,” you say.

While Isabela bathed you guarded her things. You were supposed to take turns, but you don’t really feel like swimming anymore. From the shore the ocean looks as if covered in scales of gold. You don’t want to break the illusion.

“Doesn’t it make you wish you could just look at it forever?”

Isabela doesn’t answer. She has closed her eyes.

 “I wish I could. Even though,” you say, “it does kind of hurt. Because it’s so beautiful, you know? Too beautiful.”

The breeze is timid for a seaside wind. The rushes bend to it only reluctantly. It’s cool on your forehead, brushing stray strands out of your eyes the way no one has done in many years.

“And it will all be gone soon. It can’t linger on, those are the rules of nature. Everything passes.”

You look into the light until it prickles. Spots swim in your field of vision, the brilliance of the scene imprinted on your corneas. When you bend your neck to stare at your hands instead they seem so drab, so flat, like bad drawings on old, drying parchment.   

“I know it probably sounds silly, but I look at this and then I think about that,” you say, “and then I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Isabela tips her head back and runs her fingers through her hair, squeezes the damp tresses until they weep into her hands.

“What you do, my darling, is enjoy it while it lasts.”

The sunrays reach to touch her face and set her smile ablaze. 


End file.
